“A whole lot of folks now are talking about legalizing pot. The brownies you had this morning, provided by the state of Colorado,” he jokingly said during his keynote speech at Texas Public Policy Foundation’s Policy Orientation.

Oh Ted, what a knee-slapper!

“And you can make arguments on that issue,” Cruz continued. “You can make reasonable arguments on that issue. The president earlier this past year announced the Department of Justice is going to stop prosecuting certain drug crimes. Didn’t change the law.”

The problem, as Cruz sees it, isn’t just limited to Obama’s decision to not interfere with Washington’s and Colorado’s legalization of marijuana. The president is running the government like a “corrupt dictator” and only enforcing the laws that suit him. And perhaps Cruz has a point. But let’s look at a list of Cruz’ complaints:

Last July, Obama announced a delay in the implementation of the employer mandate of the Affordable Care Act. There is no provision in the statute to allow delay of the mandate by executive order, so Cruz is correct that Obama is essentially ruling by decree in not enforcing provisions of his own health care reform legislation.

Cruz is on solid ground when criticizing Obama’s unilateral delay of the ACA employer mandate. He simply doesn’t have the executive authority to make such a decision, as a lawsuit filed in October to block the delay argued. But it all falls apart when Cruz goes after Obama on immigration and drug policy.

For one, discretion in law enforcement is not the same thing as suspending a law. Prosecutors have always had substantial leeway in choosing which cases to pursue and what evidence to present, so Obama’s directives to immigration and Justice officials on relaxing deportation rules and drug offense indictments is not flouting the law but simply changing the enforcement strategy. This is not uncommon.

But more to the point, Cruz is attacking Obama for not strictly enforcing immoral laws. No government has moral authority to use violence against people, especially so when those people have violated no one’s rights. Smoking a plant and crossing imaginary political borders are crimes only because the state has declared them so. It’s blindingly clear that the federal government has no compelling interest in criminalizing drugs nor does it have a constitutional mandate to do so. And arguably it need not have jurisdiction over immigration enforcement — the constitution provides for federal authority over naturalization, or the laws and process by which one becomes a citizen. A states’ rights advocate, as Tea Party Republicans purport to be, might argue that border enforcement is the domain of border states.

Cruz seems to be repudiating both a cornerstone of the new Republican grassroots platform, and arguing for more federal infrastructure to maintain policies any true conservative should oppose. This is the sort of cognitive dissonance, not to mention rank hypocrisy, that keeps Republicans so woefully out of step with much of the nation.

]]>http://libertarianstandard.com/2014/01/11/ted-cruz-mad-at-obama-for-not-throwing-more-pot-users-in-cages/feed/5Enoch was right (wing)http://libertarianstandard.com/2013/04/24/enoch-was-right-wing/
http://libertarianstandard.com/2013/04/24/enoch-was-right-wing/#commentsWed, 24 Apr 2013 14:43:14 +0000http://libertarianstandard.com/?p=12448I have a fondness for Enoch Powell that I never could manage for Margaret Thatcher. Perhaps that’s because I was indoctrinated to hate Thatcher and had never heard of Powell before last Saturday, when Wikipedia noted the 45th anniversary of the so-called Rivers of Blood speech for which he is infamous.

Both Thatcher and Powell were British politicians. Both were Conservatives. (Powell eventually left the Conservative party, claiming that while he was a life-long Tory, there were good Tories in the Labour Party. I guess I don’t really understand Toryism.) Both Thatcher and Powell are targets of left-wing hatred and smeared as proto-fascists. (See Lawrence Reed on the recent anti-Thatcher hatefest in the UK.) And I suspect the British Left would have a hard time distinguishing either of them politically from libertarians. We’re all ultra right wing, radically free market, and anti progress, aren’t we?

Powell rose to political stardom at the same time he fell from political power. On April 20, 1968, he gave a speech criticizing the British government’s existing immigration laws and its proposed anti-discrimination legislation. Everywhere I’ve looked for information on this speech and the speechmaker, these two issues have been conflated, and yet to a libertarian they could not be more different.

Two issues:

Immigration

Discrimination

On one of these, Powell seems to be in accord with us. On the other, not so much.

Immigration

Calls for the state to control or limit immigration are antithetical to the libertarian goal of limiting or eliminating the state itself.

Discrimination

On the other hand, any law that prohibits individuals from discriminating on any basis they choose is a violation of the fundamental rights of free association and free thought. This line from Powell’s speech, which one detractor called an “explosion of bigotry,” could not be more in accord with libertarian thinking:

The third element of the Conservative Party’s policy is that all who are in this country as citizens should be equal before the law and that there shall be no discrimination or difference made between them by public authority. As Mr. Heath has put it, we will have no “first-class citizens” and “second-class citizens”. This does not mean that the immigrant and his descendants should be elevated into a privileged or special class or that the citizen should be denied his right to discriminate in the management of his own affairs between one fellow citizen and another or that he should be subjected to inquisition as to his reasons and motives for behaving in one lawful manner rather than another.

What is not at all in accord with liberty is Powell’s suggestion that the British taxpayer provide “generous grants and assistance” to help immigrants leave the UK. (Paul McCartney apparently considered some Enoch-specific lyrics in the Beatles song “Get Back (to Where You Once Belonged)” but they didn’t make it into the final release.)

If Margaret Thatcher was the British Ronald Reagan (or vice versa), perhaps Enoch Powell was the British Pat Buchanan (or vice versa). Like Buchanan, Powell was an ultra-nationalist. Like Buchanan, he consistently took positions in opposition to the main party line of his country’s conservatives. Powell supported gay rights and opposed nuclear weapons, at least within Britain. He advocated the dismantling of the British Empire.

Unlike Buchanan, Powell often advocated for free-market positions, although he seems, like Buchanan, to have had a soft spot for economic nationalism (which consistently takes the form of protecting the nation’s producers at the expense of the nation’s consumers).

While writing this post, I thought I should double-check to see if Murray Rothbard had had anything to say about Enoch Powell back in the day. Here’s the Libertarian Forum on the British elections of 1974:

Decades of horrific British policies have created a rigid, stratified, and cartellized economy, a set of frozen power blocs integrated with Big Government: namely, Big Business and Big Labor. Even the most cautious and gradualist of English libertarians now admit that only a radical political change can save England. Enoch Powell is the only man on the horizon who could be the sparkplug for such a change. It is true, of course, that for libertarians Enoch Powell has many deficiencies. For one thing he is an admitted High Tory who believes in the divine right of kings; for another, his immigration policy is the reverse of libertarian. But on the critical issues in these parlous times: on checking the inflationary rise in the money supply, and on scuttling the disastrous price and wage controls, Powell is by far the soundest politician in Britain. A sweep of Enoch Powell into power would hardly be ideal, but it offers the best existing hope for British freedom and survival. (Libertarian Forum, March 1974)

And 8 months later:

Amidst this turmoil, the most heartening sign is the rapid growth of libertarians and anarcho-capitalists in a country that only a few years ago had virtually no one even as "extreme" as Milton Friedman. The major libertarian group is centered around Pauline Russell, and includes businessmen, journalists, economists, and others ranging from anarcho-capitalists to neo-Randians to the Selsdon Group, the free-market ginger group within the Conservative Party. Most of this group is friendly with the notable Enoch Powell, who of all the politicians in England is the only one with both the knowledge and the will to stop the monetary inflation and to put through a free market program and an end to wage and price controls. Powell, himself, despite his Tory devotion to the monarchy (which is seconded even by many of the English anarcho-capitalists), has grown increasingly libertarian. The Powell forces were working on a gusty strategy for the then forthcoming October elections: voting Labour in order to smash the statist leadership of Edward Heath. (Libertarian Forum, November 1974)

]]>http://libertarianstandard.com/2013/04/24/enoch-was-right-wing/feed/1On the Boston Lockdownhttp://libertarianstandard.com/2013/04/20/on-the-boston-lockdown/
http://libertarianstandard.com/2013/04/20/on-the-boston-lockdown/#commentsSat, 20 Apr 2013 20:39:09 +0000http://libertarianstandard.com/?p=12440One doesn’t have to be any sort of radical to be appalled that thousands of police, working with federal troops and agents, would “lockdown” an entire city—shutting down public transit, closing virtually all businesses, intimidating anyone from leaving their home, and going door to door with SWAT teams in pursuit of one suspect. The power of the police to “lockdown” a city is an authoritarian, borderline totalitarian power. A “lockdown” is prison terminology for forcing all prisoners into their cells. They did not do this to pursue the DC sniper, or to go after the Kennedy assassin, and I fear the precedent. It is eerie that this happened in an American city, and it should be eerie to you, no matter where you fall on the spectrum. You can tell me that most people in Boston were happy to go along with it, but that’s not really the point, either. If two criminals can bring an entire city to its knees like this with the help of the state, then terrorism truly is a winning strategy. (And we should also keep in mind that the overwhelming majority of the massive police response did not aid in capturing the suspect—it ultimately turned on that old fashioned breakthrough—a normal denizen calling the authorities with information.)

If America suffered a bombing like the Boston Marathon atrocity every week, America would feel like a very different place, although the homicide rate would only be about one percent higher. I acknowledge the maiming was on a mass scale, but this kind of attack has to be taken in perspective in terms of how much of a risk it poses to the average American, because we have to consider what response the people would tolerate in the event of more frequent or far worse attacks.

If the people of the United States will cheer seeing a whole city shut down, even for just a day, in the event of a horrific attack that nevertheless had 1/1000th the fatalities and about two percent of the casualties of 9/11, what would Americans support in light of another 9/11? What about a dirty bomb going off in a major city? The question has nothing to do with what government wants to do, or whether police statism is a goal or simply a consequence. What will the *people* want and expect the government to do if tens of thousands were chaotically killed and injured in a terrible terror attack, or if many small attacks hit the country? I fear they would welcome the abolition of liberty altogether, given their reaction to last night. That, of course, is altogether the wrong response. If we cannot look at the police reaction last night very critically, there is really no hope for even moderate protection of our civil liberties today.

]]>http://libertarianstandard.com/2013/04/20/on-the-boston-lockdown/feed/3The myth of high Muslim fertility rates, and the threat they posehttp://libertarianstandard.com/2012/04/02/the-myth-of-high-muslim-fertility-rates-and-the-threat-they-pose/
http://libertarianstandard.com/2012/04/02/the-myth-of-high-muslim-fertility-rates-and-the-threat-they-pose/#commentsTue, 03 Apr 2012 02:57:19 +0000http://libertarianstandard.com/?p=10799Important to the anti-Muslim narrative is the idea that Muslims reproduce at prodigious rates, and that this poses an existential threat to the West. Specifically, Muslims are reproducing so quickly, that within a generation or two, they will overwhelm the entire Western world.

These predictions are usually muttered by brooding prophets of doom who predict the near-impossibility of Western civilization over triumphing over the implacable foe. This is a common theme at various “race realist” (i.e. racist) web sites and other nationalist web sites that forever repeat myths about American exceptionalism and the U.S. state’s duty to defeat the global threat of the foreign races.

Rick Santorum has more or less built his entire career on the idea that Muslims are the great threat of our age and that all of Western society must be reformed into militant soldiers against Islam. We must “wake up” to the threat, Santorum believes. Watching the anti-Muslim crowd alternate between violent screeching for Holy War and sombre brooding over the grave threat, it is difficult to not think of the anti-communists of the days of yore, like Whittaker Chambers and Frank Meyer, who, being ex-communists, were absolutely convinced that the world was but in the midst of a losing rear-guard action against the superhuman army of Stalinist Soldiers of the Millennium.

It turned out, however, that the communist ubermensch was more interested in blue jeans and Coca Cola than in immanentizing the eschaton.

What sort of apparel and soft drinks motivate Muslims, I can’t say, but it does seem they now have at least one more thing in common with the Westerners: collapsing birth rates. Notes one researcher:

“Of the three major monotheistic religions, all of which encourage fertility, Islam is the one that encourages procreation the least,” he explains. The factor that explains different fertility rates around the world continues to be, not religion, but education levels. In addition, there are other political and sociological factors that differ from country to country, and which the examples below illustrate.
In short, a demographic Homo Islamicus does not exist. And instead of clashing civilizations, the world is headed towards demographic convergence.

Meanwhile, according to John Allen of the National Catholic Reporter, the Catholic population in Africa has increased 6,700 percent over the past century. Globally, there are not many more Muslims than the 1.1 billion Catholics, and when we add in other Christians, there are nearly twice as many Christians as Muslims.

But the the purveyors the Holy War will never be satisfied, and just as the anti-communists beat the drum for more and more government, more war, and more police statism, just as William F. Buckley called for a totalitarian bureaucracy in America to defeat communism, so it is for the anti-Muslims. Rick Santorum will not rest until the last American freedom has been extinguished in the name of killing a few more Muslims, but even if he fails, it seems likely that debt, bankruptcy, war, tyranny and societal dysfunction here at home are much bigger threats than a bunch of supposedly hyper-fertile Muslims.

]]>http://libertarianstandard.com/2012/04/02/the-myth-of-high-muslim-fertility-rates-and-the-threat-they-pose/feed/1Fears of Decentralizationhttp://libertarianstandard.com/2012/02/08/fears-of-decentralization/
http://libertarianstandard.com/2012/02/08/fears-of-decentralization/#commentsWed, 08 Feb 2012 13:27:21 +0000http://libertarianstandard.com/?p=10489Many libertarians, perhaps most notably Thomas E. Woods, support the decentralization of power from the federal government, including the power of nullification. Many people fear and denounce this power, often because they like the immense power of the central state and are supporters of big government. There are, however, some very real concerns by people who desire freedom as their highest political goal. A simple question, which is asked in various forms is “if decentralization leads to more freedom, why did African slavery thrive in a more decentralized America, and only go away (well, sort of) when the central state forced it to go away?” Similar statements could be said of Jim Crow.

Tom Woods briefly addresses a critical point which bears emphasis: a major problem with decentralization is that decentralizing power may have huge negative effects for people who cannot vote. The very people who are most obsessed with them not having political power are the people who are most empowered by the receding power of the central state. This points to the people that libertarian activists should concentrate on protecting: non-citizens (including both legal and illegal immigrants) and convicted felons in states which strip them of the franchise. As most minorities have the ability to exercise the vote, the greatest evils of the past have no chance of being repeated. And some unprecedented benefits may come about. Without the significant support of the federal government, individual states could not maintain the murderous drug war at the levels at which it is currently prosecuted. Family and morals-destroying welfare programs would have to be greatly scaled back without the ability to print money. Taxes would have to be levied to pay for these things, forcing citizens to carefully evaluate just how much they wish to impoverish themselves in the attempt to eradicate various victimless crimes.

The benefits don’t end there. Freedom would be catching in this country for several reasons. Our national myths support the value of freedom. The proximity of states and the freedom of movement among them, in the face of massive differences in the amount of liberty inside them, would mean that the most inventive, industrious people would tend to leave less free areas and go to more free ones. This would impoverish the most oppressive states, further pressuring them to liberate. Perhaps the single most important factor which would allow liberty to really catch in the United States is that the US military would not be looking to crush these efforts, as it does in other countries. If liberty is to be permitted by any government, it is likely that it will have to be permitted in the USA, as the American government is among the world’s most fervent supporters of foisting government on people, whether they like it or not, in the name of “stability.”

]]>http://libertarianstandard.com/2012/02/08/fears-of-decentralization/feed/5Dumbest Immigration Law Everhttp://libertarianstandard.com/2011/12/09/dumbest-immigration-law-ever/
http://libertarianstandard.com/2011/12/09/dumbest-immigration-law-ever/#commentsFri, 09 Dec 2011 22:38:41 +0000http://libertarianstandard.com/?p=10073For several decades, immigration has been the main source of economic growth in Alabama. Same with foreign investment and the people it brings in. Major swaths of the state would be sunk without both.

Immigration has brought not only economic growth but a much-needed cultural shift in the state. We now have ever more museums, schools, houses of worship of many varieties, and our theaters, movie houses, and orchestras are actually enjoying support. Alabama now has highly skilled hands that can do a variety of tasks that were impossible to get done before, from complex engineering to intricate tile work in public spaces. Of course the agriculture issue is gigantic: nearly all the workers were undocumented and now they are gone. Then there’s the food issue: without immigration, Alabama would be mostly burgers and chicken fingers. All of these industries, to one extent or another, rely on workers with sketchy documentation.

So what do the politicians do? This year, they whipped up an crazy xenophobic frenzy and passed a massive crackdown that led to a cruel mass exodus from the state. And they did this in the middle of a recession. Absolutely ghastly. And now the inevitable has happened: there is no one to fill these jobs. Industries are under serious strain. Businesses are going bust. Unemployment, which is already higher than the national average, is going up. There are no workers to do what the immigrants did because the necessary skills and work ethic just isn’t present in the native population (as any Alabama resident could have told you).

]]>http://libertarianstandard.com/2011/12/09/dumbest-immigration-law-ever/feed/2Somin on Gary Johnson and Ron Paul: A Replyhttp://libertarianstandard.com/2011/05/25/somin-on-gary-johnson-and-ron-paul-a-reply/
http://libertarianstandard.com/2011/05/25/somin-on-gary-johnson-and-ron-paul-a-reply/#commentsWed, 25 May 2011 19:50:55 +0000http://libertarianstandard.com/?p=8534Ilya Somin over at The Volokh Conspiracy, it seems, is no more a fan of Ron Paul now than he was four years ago. His criticisms remain about the same. This time around, though, he’s got a candidate to contrast Paul with in Gary Johnson. His conclusion? Johnson is a better libertarian than Paul. My first response to this was laughter. This is my second response:

To start, Somin nearly lost me in his first sentence when he suggested that Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels was even on the radar for libertarians considering voting. If anyone thinks a hypocritical drug warrior, who might be most charitably described as untested on foreign policy issues (and much less charitably described as a propagandist for the Empire), should even be in the running, then they should probably be disqualified from commenting on the question of who the most libertarian candidate is. All that said, we’ll give him the benefit of his doubts about Daniels for now and move onto his criticisms.

Ron Paul’s Unlibertarian Positions?

Somin claims that Ron Paul “has very nonlibertarian positions on free trade, school choice, and especially immigration.” He goes on to criticize Paul’s views on the Fourteenth Amendment. He doesn’t spell these criticisms out in this piece, but rather directs us to an older article from 2007. We’ll take each one by one.

1. Free Trade

Anyone who knows about Ron Paul’s policy positions would be shocked to find this on the list of his deviations from libertarianism. Doesn’t Paul support complete, unrestricted free trade? Has he not always advocated this? Yes, and Somin admits as much in his 2007 article. But this is apparently not enough. Instead, Paul’s libertarian credentials are called into question due to his opposition to “free trade agreements.” These, Somin argues, must be supported because they are better than the status quo. But is this true? Somin fails to address Paul’s arguments that these are not “free trade agreements” at all – but that they are instead managed trade agreements. Instead, he merely dismisses Paul’s refusal to support NAFTA and similar agreements as some misguided focus on libertarian purity and perfection as the enemy of the good. But this is not so. As Murray Rothbard explainedmanytimes, managed trade agreements like NAFTA are not a step toward freedom, but rather an extension of government controls. So much for that.

2. School Choice

A similar story with school choice. Ron Paul, an erstwhile opponent of the government interfering with people’s educational choices, is thrown under the bus for opposing the reformist “solution” of school voucher programs. Somin’s objections to Ron Paul’s position here is the same: he admits Ron Paul has a libertarian position on school choice, but thinks that some attachment to libertarian purity gets in the way of Paul taking steps to improve things. And, again, Somin declines to address the serious and significant libertarian criticisms of this proposed policy. Laurence Vance has done excellent work coveringthisissue, and Ron Paul himself has voiced the same concerns. Stefan Molyneux has raised some major objections to the idea as well. Far from the obvious libertarian position being one of support for school vouchers, even just as a stepping stone, it seems that they might very well be a step in completely the wrong direction.

3. Immigration

Here, you’ll find no objection from me on the criticism of Ron Paul’s position. I agree wholeheartedly with the libertariancritics of immigration restrictions and I make no excuses for Ron Paul’s position here, and I won’t go into wild speculation about whether he “really believes” what he says about immigration (given his change of heart since 1988). What he “really believes” is not my concern, rather I will focus on what he says, which seems to be that we must dismantle the welfare state before dismantling the statist border controls. This is an odious rationalization, and one that could easily be turned on almost any issue – we can’t end the drug war until we get rid of welfare and government-provided healthcare (as Ann Coulter says); we can’t get rid of the Patriot Act until we have stopped our foreign policy that promotes terrorism; we can’t get rid of welfare until we stop taxing and regulating the economy enough to provide everyone jobs; we can’t lower taxes until we pay off the national debt; and so on and so on. So, yes, Ron Paul’s position on immigration is indeed unlibertarian.

4. Fourteenth Amendment

I must admit, I do not know what to say about this. Mr. Somin claims that Ron Paul “thinks the Bill of Rights does not apply to the states.” This position, Somin thinks, is just “theoretically libertarian,” and only if one thinks that the Bill of Rights should apply to the states, but believes that, as a matter of fact, it does not. I won’t go into what the facts of the matter are (though I’m very skeptical of the claim that “virtually all libertarian constitutional law scholars” believe that the Fourteenth Amendment is rightly interpreted as applying the Bill of Rights to the states – Kevin Gutzman and Thomas Woods both come to mind as scholars who might take issue with that claim, I would be surprised if there weren’t many others), instead I’d like to ask: is it the obvious libertarian position that the federal government should be empowered to impose the restrictions in the Bill of Rights onto the states? Gene Healy, Roderick Long, and fellowbloggerStephanKinsella all have argued to the contrary. Ron Paul’s position here, at the least, certainly has support amongst libertarian scholars regardless of the fact of the matter.

Is Ron Paul more libertarian than Gary Johnson on any issue?

Somin has one last argument to go. He writes, “I can’t think of a single issue where Paul is more libertarian than Johnson, though I’m open to correction by people who know more about their records than I do.” Well, I might not know more about their records, but I have a few in mind. For the sake of argument, I’ll disregard the points I had above and call it a wash, except for that of immigration, and we’ll count that in Johnson’s favor. Here are three issues where Paul is head and shoulders above Johnson: 1) war, 2) sound money, and 3) torture.

1. War

Gary Johnson looks like a pro-peace candidate. He talks like a pro-peace candidate. But when it comes down to it, he is open to “humanitarian wars.” See here and here for the interview. So, as admirable as Johnson’s opposition to the current wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Libya is, the difference between him and Ron Paul on foreign policy remains stark. From my point of view, this alone would be enough to put Paul miles ahead of Johnson – there is no issue more important than war. It cannot be repeated enough: War is the Health of the State. I take it, though, that Somin will not be joining me in this judgment, given that he wrote, “I don’t agree with Johnson on everything. For example, I’m significantly more hawkish than he is on foreign policy.” Yikes.

2. Sound Money

Ron Paul has made no secret of his opposition to the Federal Reserve. Indeed, it was the keystone of his 2008 campaign, and likely will play a major role in his 2012 run. He has brought the message of sound money to the masses and introduced the Austrian Business Cycle Theory back into the mainstream. On this most important issue, Ron Paul is the standard bearer. What about Gary Johnson? Admirably, he calls for an audit of the Federal Reserve, and should be credited for that. That puts him way above most candidates. But let’s not kid ourselves. Gary Johnson is not calling for the Federal Reserve to be abolished. Gary Johnson is not making the Federal Reserve into a focal point for his campaign. Despite the supreme importance of sound money in arresting the growth of the State, Johnson has given the issue very little time and supports what is, compared to Ron Paul, a marginal compromise position.

3. Torture

This is one I couldn’t believe myself when it happened. On Freedom Watch of all places, Gary Johnson said that he would not close the torture camp at Guantanamo Bay, an absolutely appalling position. What was his justification? If we didn’t have it there, we would just have to open one elsewhere. Incredible. Why not at least give these men trials? Why not at least house them inside the borders of the United States where they might be afforded even the most minimal legal protections? This is a disgusting position. A few of my fellow bloggers commented to me that this does not represent a deviation from libertarianism on the part of Johnson, but rather makes him no libertarian at all. I could not agree more.

I could go on, but these three issues alone are more than enough to overcome any doubt on this issue. Gary Johnson has some great qualities – he supports marijuana legalization, he seems very serious about dramatically cutting spending, and despite his squishy position on it, he’s generally anti-war (for now). But more libertarian than Ron Paul? Don’t make me laugh.

]]>http://libertarianstandard.com/2011/05/25/somin-on-gary-johnson-and-ron-paul-a-reply/feed/19Ilya Somin over at The Volokh Conspiracy, it seems, is no more a fan of Ron Paul now than he was four years ago. His criticisms remain about the same. This time around, though, he’s got a candidate to contrast Paul with in Gary Johnson.Ilya Somin over at The Volokh Conspiracy, it seems, is no more a fan of Ron Paul now than he was four years ago. His criticisms remain about the same. This time around, though, he’s got a candidate to contrast Paul with in Gary Johnson. His conclusion? Johnson is a better libertarian than Paul. My […]Matt Mortellaroclean
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Mexico: The War Party’s New Target?http://libertarianstandard.com/2010/11/27/mexico-the-war-partys-new-target/
Sat, 27 Nov 2010 21:13:58 +0000http://libertarianstandard.com/?p=7248For decades, some elements of the Right (occasionally abetted by people who should have known better) have peddled the notion that Mexico has created a vast and well-organized “fifth column” within the United States dedicated to La Reconquista — the re-conquest of territories seized by the U.S. during the Mexican-American War. In this scenario, non-assimilated Mexicans by the millions are stealthily enlisting in a campaign of subversion orchestrated by the Mexican government with the help of foundation-funded anti-American groups on this side of the border — and, when the time is right, this fifth column will erupt in an orgy of violence and mayhem.

Whatever revanchist sentiments may exist in Mexico are the residue of Washington’s seizure of roughly half the country through a war of aggression. Washington’s proxy narco-war, which has killed tens of thousands of people since 2006 and displaced hundreds of thousands more, has done nothing to palliate those feelings. An actual U.S. invasion might be the only thing that would turn the alarmist fantasy of a nationalistic uprising on the part of Mexicans living on the U.S. side of the border into something akin to a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Arizona’s Republican leadership has diligently cultivated anti-immigration hysteria, and in exploiting it has managed to embrace two apparently contradictory positions: It has denounced the Obama administration for butting into state affairs by filing a federal lawsuit against SB 1070 (the “Your Papers, Please” law), while angrily demanding greater federal intervention in the form of a military presence on the border. “It’s literally out of control,” Sheriff Babeau protested in an interview with Fox News. “We stood with Senator McCain and literally demanded support for 3,000 soldiers to be deployed to Arizona to get this under control and finally secure our border with Mexico.”

Arizona’s experience illustrates that the political potency of Mexico-bashing has no logical connection to the severity of problems associated with Mexican immigration. That lesson hasn’t been lost on Texas Governor Rick Perry, an establishment Republican who has sought to cultivate a constituency among Tea Party activists. In a recent MSNBC interview, Perry upped the ante by calling for a U.S. invasion of Mexico. Of course, Perry insisted, Mexico’s government would have to “approve” of the invasion.

As if to answer the question, “What kind of Latin American political figure would `approve’ of a U.S. invasion and occupation of his country?” Colombian-bornWashington Post columnist Edward Schumacher-Matos has offered a very public endorsement of the proposal. Between positions with the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal and his present gig at the post, Schumacher-Matos taught a course at Harvard’s David Rockefeller Center for Latin American studies, which is one of several academic nurseries in which the Establishment cultivates tomorrow’s Quislings.

In a tone reminiscent of a Brezhnev-era media apparatchik condemning “reactionaries” who resisted the advance of Soviet-administered enlightenment, Schumacher-Matos piously chastises Mexico’s political class for being “too proud to do what they immediately should: Call in the Marines.” Only if Mexicans somehow emerge from “their nationalistic stupor” will they see the light of reason and welcome the presence of “American military specialists stationed within [their country’s] borders to help the country build powerful electronic intelligence systems and train modern military and police forces to replace its suffocatingly hierarchical, outdated ones.”

Although Mexico “is our neighbor and supposed longtime ally, the Mexican army has never — never — participated in a joint military exercise with the U.S. military,” Schumacher-Matos points out, inviting us to sorrowful contemplation of the shame of it all. To substantiate the point, he cites a recent study by Roderic Ai Camp of the Woodrow Wilson Center, oblivious to the irony of mentioning Wilson’s name in connection with proposed U.S. military intervention in Mexico.

“What is getting in the way of deeper cooperation with the U.S. military is that the Mexican military, political and intellectual leaders, abetted by U.S. intellectuals, still have their heads in the Mexican and American wars for the 19th century and the Cold War of the 20th,” Schumacher-Matos scolds. “They talk of imperialism and hegemony — which are irrelevant today.” This isn’t “imperialism” that we’re discussing: It’s applied humanitarianism of the kind that has turned places like Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Somalia into havens of peace and prosperity.

Elements of Schumacher-Matos’s prescription are a bit outdated. The “electronic intelligence systems” he describes are already operating in Mexico, huge amounts of money are being poured into training and equipping Mexican military and police, and U.S.-trained paramilitaries are actively involved in the Drug War — albeit, for the most part, on the side of the cartels. None of this is sufficient, he insists; there is no substitute for U.S. boots on the ground, even though the troops wearing them would be sent in a purely “advisory” capacity, at first, as they always are.

No hyperbole is involved in describing Mexico as another front in the Regime’s war with — well, practically everybody. This is illustrated by “The Third Front,” this evening’s installment of Oliver North’s “War Stories” agitprop series on the Fox News Channel. That title says a great deal about the assumptions of the militarist Right, which the FNC’s core demographic: Because our state of war never ends, we don’t begin a new war, we simply focus on a different “front.” Accordingly, Mexico will soon endure some more unwanted attention from the War Party, irrespective of what happens in Iraq, Afghanistan, Iran, or North Korea.

]]>A Thought On Immigration And Time Preferencehttp://libertarianstandard.com/2010/09/10/a-thought-on-immigration-and-time-preference/
Fri, 10 Sep 2010 20:08:18 +0000http://libertarianstandard.com/?p=5138When talking about immigration, some conservatives complain that immigrants often times do not assimilate. They do not, among others, learn the language, settle down, establish themselves in the community and so on. What is puzzling about this view is that, though not necessarily incorrect, political conservatives appear to support policies that lead exactly to the result they want to avoid.

Take a look at farm workers visas, as well as other temporary work permits. Not only do they cause chronic employment shortages and similar problems (upstate NY is plagued by this issue), but because transient workers are not allowed to have permanent residency, their place in the workforce is tenuous. Indeed, lacking stable, reliable employment, their time preference is increased. No longer can they plan for long-term living arrangements, savings, settling down, establishing their families–things permanent residents/citizens can do. Temporary work visas bolster the existence of the “bad immigrant hood.” They end up with poor, crowded living conditions.

When I brought up this point to a friend, he said, “I used to deliver pizzas to a motel near the Monfort rendering plant on the north side of town. In each room there would be up to 8 people, all Mexican migrant workers, sharing like two mattresses on the floor. Their living conditions sucked but they all were trying to save money to take back home… Obviously if these guys could stay year-round they would likely not want to remain in such squalid conditions.”

In a column released online today, the Washington Post’s Dana Milbank noted that Arizona Republican governor Jan Brewer, a strong proponent of her state’s controversial immigration bill, has claimed that Arizona’s “law enforcement agencies have found bodies in the desert either buried or just lying out there that have been beheaded.”

As Milbank noted, the Arizona Guardian checked that claim out and found no evidence of beheadings; Brewer’s office did not respond to a request from the columnist for documentation for the beheading claim.

But the claim has come back to haunt her after her stammering debate performance in which she failed to back it up and ignored repeated questions on the issue from a scrum of reporters.

Brewer has spent the time since backtracking and trying to repair the damage done from her cringe-worthy debate against underdog challenger Terry Goddard.

“That was an error, if I said that,” the Republican told the Associated Press on Friday. “I misspoke, but you know, let me be clear, I am concerned about the border region because it continues to be reported in Mexico that there’s a lot of violence going on and we don’t want that going into Arizona.”

She said she was referring to beheadings and other cartel-related violence in Mexico in comments she made earlier this summer about decapitated bodies found in the state’s southern region.

Appearing on a local television show Sunday morning, Gov. Jan Brewer described how bad Arizona’s illegal immigration problem has gotten.

“Our law enforcement agencies have found bodies in the desert either buried or just lying out there that have been beheaded,” she said.

No reasonably literate person could read that statement and interpret it to mean that she was referring to drug war violence in Mexico. Brewer lied in a grandstanding attempt to gin up support for the state’s fascist anti-immigration bill. Everybody knows she lied, including her Democratic opponent in the governor’s race, the press, and most other people paying attention. Unfortunately, that doesn’t include Arizona voters, who still favor her over Goddard by a nearly two-to-one margin.

What’s worse, Brewer’s mendacity, or the Arizona electorate’s gullibility? It’s an embarrassment in either case.